


A Thicket Of Roses & Winding Thorns

by Dikhotomia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Snapshots, this is just a whole lot of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23470324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: The second comes, wracking and all consuming, during training. She feels fortunate she's not part of the demonstration when the tickle crawls into her throat and down into her lungs. She turns away, hoping not to be noticed in the back where she's sequestered herself, hidden behind taller students all focused on the lecture and the clatter of wooden weapons. She can feel it now, her thicket of roses and their thorns that wind like vines from her lungs and through her ribs. They take the ground she possesses, day by day.They take more when she's near."Edelgard? Is everything alright?"OREdelgard wars with a love unrequited.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 19
Kudos: 174





	A Thicket Of Roses & Winding Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> Hooboy this one was a doozy to write and I'm not....100% happy with it (Author struggles HAH) but here it is, my second run at a Hanahaki fic. Just with Edeleth this time. This is told in snapshots so it's not entirely in chronological order and might be a little hard to follow.
> 
> It's done on purpose.

_"Once a woman fell in love--"_

It starts as a tickle in the back of her throat she passes off as an allergy. Something annoying that hitches her breath and forces her to cough into the back of her hand to clear it. It's little else, and she waves off Hubert's concern as he leans down to press a hand to her forehead. 

"I'm fine," she says, gently pushing his arm away. "Just a tickle." She didn't feel ill otherwise, no fever, no soreness, not even a stuffy nose or anything that would make her believe she had a cold brought on by the change of seasons attempting to make itself at home in her lungs and head.

Hubert looks at her, still concerned. "If you're sure, Lady Edelgard," he says finally, brushing her bangs out of her face. "Let me know if you do start feeling under the weather."

He knows well enough she's not likely to, and she smiles slightly at him in thanks. He's used to having to pick out her illnesses by watching her instead of hearing her complain.  
Migraines, nightmares, colds and worse or mundane things, she's weathered them all in silence. She had been sicker trapped underground, known what it was like to have her lungs full with fluid and her coughs choking and wet. The fever of infection and the delirium that came with it, the pain of the experiments. A mild cold was nothing in comparison.

"It's probably just allergies," she replies, clearing her throat once more. "I'll have a cup of tea with lunch today, perhaps that will soothe it." She ends the conversation at that, steps ringing off the stone of the monastery's halls, Hubert's an easy companion. It wouldn't impact her studies, wouldn't impact her plans.

If anything it would be gone within a few weeks and she could focus back on more important things then an unexplained tickle in the back of her throat.

She has her tea with lunch, enjoys conversation with others in her class and with their Professor when she settles along with them.

_The ache is distant, a whisper against the bars of her ribs_

\------

_"I'm your new Professor."_

She remembered the reaction of the class like it was a day ago, not months, remembered the whispers and the questions. Remembers how the Professor had answered each and every question tossed at her without any qualms or hesitation.

Edelgard also remembers what the Professor had done for her, her own hidden secret tucked away in the edges of her mind. It's better if the older woman thinks she's unaware, thinks that Edelgard's sense of Déjà vu was just that. Not an awareness of living the same few seconds twice.

_"I know what you did for me."_

\------

The tickle progresses to a cough and it leaves her feeling as though something has lodged itself in her throat. It stays through all her attempts to clear it until her throat aches and she grimaces with each swallow. She gives up, choosing to do her best to ignore the feeling and focus on class for the day. Her eyes leave the Professor only to take notes, and an ache previously distant closes present hands around her lungs.

 _Maybe_ , she thinks, _maybe it's not allergies._

_Maybe it's you._

She dismisses the thought as quickly as it surfaced, banishing it out of her mind. A foolish paranoia sprung up from old wives tales during the Garland Moon. Something someone had read to her from a book once.

"It's just a cold," she whispers to herself, organizing her journals at the end of class.

_The ache persists, pressing against the cage of her bones._

\-------

The first coughing fit is one suffered in full armor, helmet clanging hollowly to the floor as she clutches her chest and presses a palm to her mouth to muffle herself. Each cough ragged and heaving and dizzying. 

_"--a love so deep it made her heart sing--"_

The first petal sits almost innocently against the polished armor of her gauntlet, a deep burgundy glistening in the flickering firelight. She swallows down the metallic tang of blood and crushed flowers, closing her fist around the petal.

"Are you alright?" Thales asks from somewhere behind her, steps echoing off the stone. "Everyone's waiting."

"I'm fine," she says, picking her helmet up and sliding it on. "Let's go."

_She leaves the petal to wilt in darkness._

\-----

The second comes, wracking and all consuming, during training. She feels fortunate she's not part of the demonstration when the tickle crawls into her throat and down into her lungs. She turns away, hoping not to be noticed in the back where she's sequestered herself, hidden behind taller students all focused on the lecture and the clatter of wooden weapons. She can feel it now, her thicket of roses and their thorns that wind like vines from her lungs and through her ribs. They take the ground she possesses, day by day.

_They take more when she's near._

"Edelgard? Is everything alright?"

She's a prisoner in her own body, held under siege.

The Professor looms out of her peripheral, hand warm where it rubs soothingly up and down her back as the next fit of coughing rattles her body. 

_Nothing is alright._

"Edelgard, I need you to breathe, okay?" The Professor's voice is lightly concerned, the usually blank nature of her face darkened at the edges. She leans closer, her other hand closing around her bicep. 

And she does, something deep and shuddering, choked down into burning lungs. She keeps her hand close to her chest, fingers closed around what she knows lays in the palm of it. Slowly she turns to face the Professor and the worried faces of her classmates, Hubert's hawk-eyed stare pinning her to her spot where he focuses in on the side of her face. 

"Thank you, Professor," she says, ignoring the hitching pain in every breath she takes. "The dust must have gotten to me for some reason." It's a lie, spoken easily with as casual a smile as she can hold. She's always been good at lying, at hiding things in plain sight. Yet when it came to the woman before her she stutters, reaching in the hopes that maybe, maybe she would take the hand she offers.

But she knows better than to hope.

_"---But that love was unrequited---"_

The Professor doesn't entirely buy it, too blue eyes studying her face, hands warm and comforting where they rest on her shoulders. Edelgard tries for another smile, forces it into something reassuring and more genuine. Something eases in the Professor's features, lips thinning into a near ghost of a smile in return.

"Okay," she says, slowly withdrawing from her. "Don't push yourself too hard, alright? It's okay if you have to slow down a bit." 

Not her, never her. Even drowning in a self contained garden made from the shards of the emotions she tried so desperately to keep in check. She couldn't slow down, she couldn't afford to. Not when the hands of time moved ever faster, and listed further from her favor.

Seconds measured in finger lengths tapped against an idle thigh.

"I will," another lie, spoken through teeth that cut into the inside of her lip as the vines tighten until for a precious moment, she forgets how to breathe again.

_"I can't, not even for you."_

\------

The coughing persists, hanging over her like a familiar friend. She learns to function around it, how to restrain her fits into something short and sharp to keep herself from interrupting lectures and daily life. People cast worried glances at her and Hubert hardly ever leaves her side, tending to things for her when she knew she was perfectly capable of doing them herself.

The coughing persists, and it drains. But the exhaustion that comes with the thicket she unwillingly cares for is something she's used to, running herself ragged until she was pale and falling asleep where she sat was a habit she had mastered over her short years.

She still goes to class, still trains, still moves her plans along even as the vines crawl through her body more, growing through limbs and around bones, a delicate presence like an itch underneath her skin. She can feel them when she moves, threading along her muscles, resistance in the fluidity of her body.

\------

_"Will you join me?"_

_It's you_. She thinks, facing down the anger of a woman determined to bring her down to her knees. The anger of a woman who has no idea who resides underneath the identity of the Flame Emperor. It's you. She knows distantly this woman will be the death of her in one way or another.

Either from her sickness or from a sword buried in her chest. She has no way of knowing.

_"It's a shame, I see your anger--"_

_"All you would do is try to take me down when my back was turned."_

She ignores Thales' assurances that they don't need her. Ignores Solon's mean nothing apologies. The ache becomes a pain, but she breathes a little easier now.

\-----

"Hey Edelgard." 

The Professor finds her settled in the gardens, feet pulled underneath her and tea cradled easily in her hands. She feels better than she has in a while, the cough subsiding, but the vines are as persistent as the flower still in her lungs. By now she knows what this is, the old tale whispering in the back of her mind each time things get too quiet around her. 

_"--Her love never noticed her feelings--"_

"Hello Professor," she says, smiling. "What can I do for you?" 

"May I join you?" the other woman asks, hand resting on the chair across from her. She gestures easily, tipping her head and watching as she lowers herself into the seat, hands resting across the table separating them. "Are you okay?" 

The question takes her off guard, leaves her blinking and searching for an appropriate answer. Because there wasn't a right one for the odd situation she found herself tucked in. She was both 'okay' and not at all, simply hanging between the two and moving forward with the flow of it all.

She doubted she'd ever be 'okay' again.

"Of course, why do you ask?" She says, question for a question. Keeping her truth hidden underneath the layer of the masks she wore. 

"You just look...I don't know, really drained? And pale." She frowns as she speaks, fixing her with a familiar near pout that sticks in her ribs and fractures the edges of the smile she wears. It freezes, held only by her own silence and stillness.

 _She knows nothing of the vines pushing up underneath her skin--a perfect accompaniment to the canvas of scars already littering._

"Oh it's me who appears different, is it?" Edelgard counters, recovering from her near slip with a casual joke. "What about you?" The Professor with her pale green hair and sea-foam eyes. 

The other woman balks, jaw working and blush coloring her cheeks. "I'm sorry I didn't mean-"

"My teacher," she cuts in, voice low, weight leaned on the elbows she rests against the table top. "It's okay. I'm fine. There's just been a lot happening lately." _And a lot more that will happen_ , she thinks, reassuring smile plastered in place again. 

_Everything is fine._

_Please don't notice._

_Please._

"I know," the Professor agrees, frowning. "I'm glad we have this downtime after everything...It's given me time to sort some things out." She leans down, resting her chin against her forearms and watching her, watching the way she swallows and moves, so much stiffer then before. She's still worried, still cares. It makes it hurt worse.

"I must admit I'm glad to see you...as back to normal as you can be given the circumstances," Edelgard ventures, choosing her words. "I missed seeing you smile." It's a mistake to admit, she thinks, sipping her tea to mask the cough that threatens.

But the reaction is worth it, watching the way the Professor's face changes, lips sliding easily into the smile she's come to enjoy, eyes lightning with a kindness she hadn't expected to see so fully. And there's affection there, warm and caring. "Thank you, Edelgard. For being there, at the time I know I didn't take what you said well...but it helped me more than I was aware."

"I hope to remain here for you, my teacher," she replies. _For as long as I can_ , she thinks. 

The silence that falls between them is comfortable.

\------

She coughs hard enough her vision spots, white light flickering between closed eyes. Her head spins and her chest heaves and throbs, body listing until she's stuck leaning against the wall beside her, held up by her forearm and willpower alone. She coughs until burgundy petals spill from around the edges of the hand she keeps pressed to her mouth, fluttering down to the tiled floor.

She's thankful to be alone, thankful for the empty hallway but not the ringing silence that bounces the noise of each heaving cough back into her ears. She wheezes, inhaling around the petals still caught in her throat, before she succumbs to the next wave.

_Drowning--_

"Edelgard!" Again the Professor is there, always there, hands on her back and shoulder, voice high and thready with worry. "What-?" She doesn't know, of course she doesn't know, it makes it worse and better, having her be oblivious to what's causing her suffering.

 _It's your fault_ , she still thinks as the vines complete their tangle around every inch of her, thorns digging deep into muscle and into her lungs until every breath is an ache that radiates. She wonders if one day she would choke on the petals that blossom so beautifully in the hollow of her throat.

_It's you,_

_It's you,_

_it's you._

The Professor calls for help and cradles her against her chest, whispering attempts at comfort against her temple. Her consciousness gives out as she hears Hubert's voice down the hall.

_She dreams of petals falling like snow._

\------

She never gets to ask. Never gets the chance to show the Professor who she really was and what she was fighting for before the world falls apart, she never finds out the truth and for it Edelgard suffers. For it they all suffer, forced to stand strong in the face of her classmates looks of pain and confusion as she confronts them. The ensuing fight is numbing, her mind and body hardly registering anything that happens between when it starts to when her and the Professor cross weapons, axe and sword, feelings set aside in a test of will and strength.

"I can't join you, I'm sorry"

She suffers the agony in silence, her smile as hollow as the feeling in her chest. The thorns cut into her throat, blood and earth welling up into her mouth and drizzling hot between clenched teeth like the tears that burn down her cheeks.

Dorothea finds her on her knees, vomiting blood and petals onto the cold stone between helpless, shuddering sobs. The other girl gathers her up, holding her to her and running her fingers through her hair, tears falling in silent accompaniment. Petra and Hubert stand over them, backs turned and fists clenched at their sides.

Edelgard tries to cut the part of her that loves the Professor out.

_"--She made a Garland for her love out of the flowers she bloomed"_

\-------

_"If only you were someone who could be swayed by my actions and words."_

For five years she suffers, clinging stubbornly despite the garden draining on her. She lets Ferdinand and Hubert handle everything when she's too tired to, yet still flings herself willingly into the front line of battle, pushing, pushing, pushing until they reach a stalemate she holds through sheer force of unbending will. But the enemy whispers, wondering if perhaps one day the sickly Emperor would keel over and die before the war ended.

For three years she gets a little better, the vines easing and the flowers wilting as her feelings shift and her emotions grow colder, harder. Her love eases, yet it's presence also keeps her human. Her love eases and she grows stronger, fighting harder, fighting better. Dragging herself up tooth and nail with thorns that still catch against her shirts and her pants, winding like golden filigree through a broken vase.

_Held together by the same thing that's killing her._

For a year she remembers what it's like to breathe again.

_It takes a day to undo it all._

\-----

There's something different about facing the Professor again, something different in the way she looks at her as they speak, as Edelgard makes one last attempt to convince her to join, to come back with her. She can't tell what it is, but it's something that's dug deep and is holding the older woman in a vice grip so tight it looks as though it's suffocating her. 

Another part of both of them chips away and dies with the Professor's stuttered refusal. Her hesitation stripping Edelgard down to core and laying her bare, laying her bare to a resurgence of familiar pain as she forces herself to truly see the other woman as nothing more than an enemy now.

An enemy a part of her would always love.

Will wavers like a guttering flame as they cross blades, again and again until hesitation stays them both, metal and bone inches away from flesh. Edelgard kills another part of herself with it, shutters herself off in the face of the Professor's pain.

In the face of the Professor's regret.

She leaves her there with a promise, a promise that only one of them would walk away next time.

_She knew--_

\-----

In the fall Byleth finds her, sitting against the edge of her throne so quietly waiting for the moment death came to claim her. The army was at her doorstep, her own struggling to push it back, and she could do nothing in the face of it. Could barely stand to lift Aymr with how weak she had become. She had seen herself in the mirror that morning, pale and sallow, vines standing out stark against her pale skin. 

She was wasting away.

"I had hoped, we could have seen eye to eye," she murmurs when the other woman kneels in front of her, sword forgotten on the ground. "I...wanted to walk with you." Slowly the Professor leans closer, gently gathering her against her chest again, curling around her protectively. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Byleth whispers, pressed close enough her breath tickles against her cheek. "Why didn't you tell me it was me?"

She laughs, weak and thready. "And how would you have reacted? Knowing that either way you would be the death of me?" She asks, brushing her fingers against the other woman's cheek. 

_Are you crying?_

"I would have been able to tell you how I felt!" Byleth snaps, shaking her gently. "I would have-"

"You are crying..." Edelgard says, surprised at the feeling of hot tears hitting her face, at the words the other woman tries to speak. 

_How did you feel?_

"There's no need for tears," she assures, wiping them away with a knuckle. "I wanted to tell you," she adds, letting Byleth hold her closer, tangling them together until there's no way to tell where one ends or the other began. "I just never got the chance."

"I love you," Byleth says, words wrung from her. "I tried not to, I even tried to hate you after I found out you were the Flame Emperor...but I couldn't, not fully. Even though I fought to try and stop you...I didn't know the full truth." 

She wonders distantly if this is too late, if Byleth's lips pressed to hers would do anything to ease the garden in her. "Please don't die," Byleth pleads. 

"Please."

Edelgard smiles, breathing just a little easier. "I'll try."

But she can hear the enemy approaching, armor on stone and voices carrying along the palace halls. Byleth looks up, away, jaw flexing as she stares at the throne room door then down at her. "Is there-?"

"Yes, behind the throne." She doesn't know why Byleth asks, doesn't know why she tells her. 

She doesn't question it.

Byleth lifts her with little trouble, both of their weapons on her back.

She runs.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos)


End file.
